


All of my goodness is gone with you now

by alterocentrist



Category: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu | Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Art History, F/F, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:08:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23049817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alterocentrist/pseuds/alterocentrist
Summary: Marianne is an art consultant with an interest in history, which she has been channeling into her side project: uncovering the story behind a painting of a woman on fire. When new evidence emerges, Marianne finds herself on a journey of small discoveries.Inspired bythis postthat grey wrote on Tumblr, and by the novel she mentions in the post,Possessionby AS Byatt. The title is from "Shrike" by Hozier, which I discovered on a Portrait-inspired Spotify playlist entitled "the poet's choice".
Relationships: Héloïse/Marianne (Portrait of a Lady on Fire)
Comments: 67
Kudos: 456





	All of my goodness is gone with you now

Marianne’s shoulders hunched over her laptop as she typed out sentences in English, muttering the words to herself to check what they sounded like. She read over her email again, before reminding herself that it was not her fault that culturally, the British and Americans only ever felt compelled to learn one language.

As soon as she sent the email, she shut her laptop and pinched the bridge of her nose.

Her phone pinged. A reply already? Marianne groaned. She picked her phone up and unlocked it, prepared to read an Out of Office email. However, the message wasn’t from Sotheby’s. It was from Natalie, her friend who worked as a trainer at the Institut national du patrimoine, training conservators. Her email was concise: _Some portraits of a familiar face arrived this morning. I thought you may be interested in them._ There were two photographs attached to the email.

Marianne opened one of them and gasped. She checked the time, before shooting off a reply to her friend: _How long can you stay there for?_ It would take her nearly an hour to get to Aubervilliers at this time of day. She chucked her phone into her bag and shrugged into her jacket, and practically ran out of the office to the nearest metro station.

Forty minutes later, Natalie was leading her down the corridor to one of the laboratories. She explained the origin of the paintings: “We send discreet callouts to people who want to restore their old artwork, you know, mostly family heirlooms, so the trainees could practise on them,” she said. “We don’t usually get many takers, for obvious reasons, but we do get interesting ones sent in from time to time.” She led Marianne to a workbench that had the two paintings side by side. “I’ll work on these myself. The trainees won’t touch them.”

“Right.” Marianne fixed her eyes on the first painting: it was a blonde woman, in an emerald green dress, her body turned slightly sideways, her arm resting on a piece of unseen furniture. However, these details were not as important as the woman’s face, freed from the docility that afflicted women’s portraits in that time period. At first glance, the woman appeared to scowl, but further examination suggested the beginning of a smile. But it was her eyes that struck Marianne the most: a steely blue, and yet rich with emotion. Marianne knew them well.

The second painting was of the same woman, older, as suggested by the fullness of her face, the softer jawline, and the young child standing by her arm. She and the child were attired in similar white garments, and they had both been looking at the painter. There was a whisper of a haughty smirk on the woman’s lips, and in her free hand, a purple-covered book, with a finger stuck in the pages to keep her place.

“Who sent these to you?” Marianne asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

* * *

On the way back from Aubervilliers, Marianne sent a message on the group chat she shared with her parents, inviting them both to dinner out at one of their favourite restaurants. Her father asked what the occasion was, punctuated with a cheeky emoji. Marianne replied that it was a surprise, and that she had made the reservation for seven-thirty.

They met outside the restaurant that evening. Once seated, her father asked her the question again.

“Let’s order some wine first,” Marianne said, though she was bursting with her secret.

“Come on! What’s with the delay?” her father asked.

Her mother placed a hand over her father’s. “I think we should just enjoy the wait,” she said.

Marianne flagged down a waiter and asked for a bottle of red wine. When it arrived, she poured glasses for the three of them. “What were you guys up to today?” she asked, after they all toasted each other.

“I was at the Louvre doing some consulting with the conservators,” her father said.

“I was helping a client pick out some artwork for her new office,” her mother said.

The waiter swung by again to take their orders. When he left, Marianne could no longer stop herself: “Well, I met with Natalie, up in Aubervilliers.”

“Oh, wonderful,” her father said. “Did she have something interesting for you?”

“You could definitely say that,” Marianne said. Grinning, she pulled up the photographs of the portraits on her phone and showed them to her parents.

Her mother clapped a hand over her mouth. “It’s the woman!”

“Yes!” Marianne said.

Her father matched her grin. “Marianne, chérie, this is exciting,” he said. “Has Natalie done the tests?” 

“Not yet. She should get it done within the next couple of days,” Marianne said. These were the tests that would tell them approximately how old the portraits were. From this, along with the other bits of evidence she had, Marianne would finally have a somewhat solid place to start.

“What a happy turn of events,” her father said, raising his wine glass towards Marianne. “It’s been a long time coming.”

* * *

The climate-controlled room where the artworks were stored was Marianne’s favourite area of the office. She snapped on a pair of archival gloves. She opened a cabinet and carefully pulled out a wooden panel, and then, she opened one of the pneumatic drawers and fished out a small box and a folder. She laid the items out on the nearest workbench. She stroked her chin as she stared at them.

The wooden panel: a hazy, overcast landscape at the beginning of twilight, and just off-centre, in the distance, a woman in a navy dress, the hem of which had caught flames. The details of her face were not seen.

She opened the item in the small box. A cameo portrait, barely bigger than her palm. It was, she now discovered, a close-up of the portrait of the woman in the green dress.

Marianne flipped open the folder and carefully set aside the protective tissue wrapping. She thumbed through the sheafs of paper, containing charcoal sketches of the same woman’s features. Her jawline, her ear, her neck, her lips.

Who was she?

Perhaps Marianne shouldn’t hope too early, but more than ever, she felt closer to finding out.

* * *

A phone call and an email from Natalie nearly a week later confirmed it that the portraits were painted in approximately the same decade as the painting of the woman whose dress was on fire. “I don’t think these two portraits were painted by the same artist, though,” Natalie had told her.

“What makes you say that?” Marianne had asked.

“Well, firstly, the paints have a different chemical composition, so they must have not been bought from the same supplier,” Natalie had said.

“Maybe the artist did the second portrait in another city, and he bought his paint there,” Marianne had said.

“Well, there are also stylistic differences,” Natalie had said. “But I’ll let you be the judge of that.” She then proceeded to invite Marianne back to Aubervilliers to take high definition photographs of the now-restored portraits. In that time, Marianne had managed to find out about where the portraits came from.

They were picked up by courier from an office building just fifteen minutes away on the metro from where Marianne worked. A Google search informed her that the office building housed a handful of companies, but two of its floors were occupied by a publishing house, the name of which was mentioned on the return address on the courier’s slip. The courier’s slip also included the name of the person who had sent the paintings.

Marianne called the publishing house and after explaining herself, managed to arrange a time to drop by. She found her way there in the afternoon. The space was outfitted with trendy, modern furniture. There were plants in the corners, and framed posters of book covers hung on the walls. Marianne introduced herself to the receptionist, who pointed out the way to the correct office, just two doors down the hall.

Through the open door, Marianne saw a woman, bent over her desk while sorting through a pile of paperbacks. Her shoulder-length, dark blonde hair had fallen over her face, obscuring it from view. Marianne took a step forward and rapped her knuckles on the doorjamb. “Bonjour,” she said. “I’m Marianne.”

“Bonjour.” The woman looked up, her left hand pushing her hair away from her face. “I’m Héloïse. Enchantée.”

Marianne lost her words momentarily. She knew she would be meeting someone named Héloïse, but she didn’t know that this person would bear resemblance to the woman in the portraits. It was uncanny. The cold eyes, the full lips, the high cheekbones. The green shirt that Héloïse was wearing, sleeves folded up to her elbows, further added to the effect. “Enchantée,” she finally gasped out.

“Ça va?” Héloïse asked. Her eyes flitted down to the chair on the other side of her desk. “Take a seat.”

Marianne obliged, and waited until Héloïse did the same.

“You’re here about the portraits,” Héloïse said. “But you’re not from the institute?”

“No, I’m not.” Marianne took one of her business cards and held it out to Héloïse, who accepted it. “I’m from an art consultancy, and this is a side project for me. Art history is my speciality.”

“What interests you about Héloïse’s portraits?”

Marianne frowned. “Pardon?”

“The woman in the paintings. She was an ancestor, a great-grandmother, from six or seven generations ago,” Héloïse said. “I was named after her. Of course, my father didn’t predict that I was going to end up looking like her.” She smirked. “Strange, isn’t it? Our eye colours are different and my hair is darker.”

“What else do you know about her?” Marianne inched forward in her seat.

“Not much,” Héloïse told her. “The only reason I had them was because my parents brought them over from Nice for me to send to the institute. They need to be restored, and they didn’t want to pay the money.” She leaned back in her chair. “You mentioned you were a historian. Do you have an ongoing investigation?”

“Our consultancy is in possession of some items from an unknown artist who, I’m certain, was the same one who painted at least one of the portraits,” Marianne said. “The one where she’s in the green dress.”

“My father said that it was an engagement portrait,” Héloïse said.

This piece of information sent a chill down Marianne’s body. If it was an engagement portrait, then how did that explain its separation from the cameo?

“Your eyes went wide just then,” Héloïse observed. “Care to share?”

“It’s hard to explain. Would you like to come to the consultancy to see the items?” Marianne asked.

“As I said, I wouldn’t be of much help. I’ve never been all that curious about the portraits. They freaked me out, actually. It was too much like looking at myself,” Héloïse said.

“But you’d still like to see what I’ve got?” Marianne asked, drawing attention to the fact that Héloïse didn’t answer her question.

Héloïse paused. She held Marianne’s gaze for a moment, her expression stony. “Yes,” she said. “But not today. Forgive me, I don’t have much time.” She checked her watch. “Something came up before you got here, so now I’ve got a Skype call from New York in fifteen minutes.” She picked up Marianne’s business card from where she had placed it on her desk. “I’ll get in touch with you.” She got to her feet.

Marianne did the same. She shook Héloïse’s outstretched hand. “Let me know when you’re available,” she said.

“I will.”

Marianne slung her satchel across her body. “Thank you for your time.” With a final smile to Héloïse, who responded with a simple nod, she exited her office and made her way out, thanking the receptionist as she left.

* * *

A few days later, Héloïse arranged to visit Marianne’s office.

Since the consultancy didn’t need to be somewhere where the public could easily find it and walk in, Marianne’s parents had bought office space in a rather inconvenient location, for a more reasonable price, by Paris standards. And so, at their agreed time, Marianne put her coat on and walked to meet Héloïse at the nearest metro exit.

Héloïse emerged from the metro stairs. She was bundled up in a cream-coloured scarf, which was bunched into the lapels of her zipped-up, navy fishtail parka. She held a paperback in one hand. She spotted Marianne and raised her eyebrows in acknowledgement. “Bonjour,” she said. “Lead the way?”

“Yeah, just over here,” Marianne said.

“My apartment is just the next stop on the metro,” Héloïse told her.

“Is that so?”

Héloïse nodded. “I wouldn’t have known that there would be an art consultancy here.”

“There’s plenty of us all over the place, this being Paris and all,” Marianne said, taking a tiny, secret pleasure at the knowledge that Héloïse was a transplant to the city. They stopped at the door of a nondescript building. “Here we are.” She led Héloïse up a flight of stairs, and they stopped outside the door of the art storage room. Marianne took off her coat and hung it on one of the hooks beside the door.

Taking her cue, Héloïse removed her backpack and placed it on the floor under the hooks. She opened it quickly and dropped her book inside, unfurled her scarf, and then she hung her jacket up, too.

Marianne unlocked the door using her keycard. She gestured for Héloïse to enter first. She followed her inside and shut the door behind them. 

Héloïse looked around the room, her eyes wide, the fingers of her left hand picking at the cuffs of her sweater. “So.” Her gaze fell on Marianne. “Do we need to put on our hazmat suits?”

“No.” Marianne smiled at Héloïse’s deadpan tone. “You’ll need these, though, if you want to touch them.” She handed Héloïse a pair of gloves, before putting on her own. “Come this way.” She walked over to the workbench where she had left the items.

Héloïse’s attention was caught by the painting of the woman with her dress on fire. “How do you know that this is the same artist that painted her portrait?” she asked, not even looking at Marianne.

“Because of this.” Marianne reached for the small box containing the cameo portrait. She gave it to Héloïse.

Nodding wordlessly, Héloïse opened the box. She looked down at the cameo for a few seconds, before asking Marianne: “Can I touch it?”

“Sure.”

Héloïse placed the box down on the workbench and gingerly fished the cameo from it.

Marianne watched as Héloïse examined the cameo. She wondered how Héloïse must be feeling. It must be bizarre, to stare at a face that wasn’t your own, but somehow looked nearly exactly like you. She leaned against a wall of pneumatic drawers, just quietly observing, letting Héloïse have her moment with the woman whose name she bore.

Héloïse placed the cameo back in its box. She leaned forward to examine the painting of the woman on fire. “Do you think this is Héloïse, too?”

“I’m certain. He, uh, he had a unique interest in her, you could say,” Marianne said. She opened the folder containing the sketches, and slid it towards Héloïse. “Look. I think he drew these in preparation for the engagement portrait.”

Héloïse looked at Marianne. “How long have you had these for?”

“Ten months. One of my father’s clients, he bought them from a small gallery on a whim. They were letting go of their stock, most of it unattributed. These came as a set. Apparently they were found in an abandoned building in the city sometime in the late nineteenth century, and have been passed around to different galleries ever since,” Marianne explained. “The client was briefly thrilled with the prospect of discovering someone significant, so he brought these to us for appraisal and research, and I was just so _struck_. He noticed and he decided to give them to me… I’ve been trying to find a lead ever since.”

“And have you found any?”

“No. Not until you sent those portraits to the institute,” Marianne answered. She had browsed through dozens of art history books and spent her days off travelling to visit museums, hoping to find similarities or coincidences with the attributed works they contained. She got in touch with all the museum and gallery professionals she knew. Nobody could make a connection. This wasn't uncommon; an innumerable amount of artworks stay unattributed forever.

"I wouldn't have been so patient," Héloïse said.

"Patience is often rewarded with luck, I find," Marianne said. With her gloved finger, she traced lightly along the sketched jawline.

“What do you want to find out?” Héloïse asked.

Marianne looked at her, as if to check if she was completely serious with her question. When she saw Héloïse’s set jaw and furrowed brow, she took a deep breath. “Honestly, I don’t know what kind of things I’ll discover. _If_ I actually discover anything,” she admitted. “But, come on. Look at her.” She gestured at the woman in the green dress. “This is going to sound silly, but I feel like she wants me to tell her story.”

“Or perhaps the painter wants you to tell his,” Héloïse said.

“Those stories could be one and the same,” Marianne said. “He kept these, after all.” She nodded towards the sketches and the cameo. “That means something.”

Héloïse nodded, but didn’t respond.

After a few more minutes of silently looking at the pieces, Marianne returned the sketches and the cameo portrait back to their drawer, and placed the painting back in its cabinet. She removed her gloves and held her hand out for Héloïse’s, and placed them in another drawer together.

They exited the art storage room. “I’ll walk you out,” Marianne said.

“No need.” Héloïse shook her head. “I can find my way there. Thank you for taking the time to show these to me.” She shrugged her jacket back on, wrapped herself back up in her scarf, and slung her backpack over one shoulder, and then the other. “I’ll see you soon.”

Marianne blinked. “Okay.” She walked Héloïse as far as the top of the stairs.

“Au revoir.” Héloïse made her way down.

Marianne watched her until she disappeared around the corner.

* * *

It was Héloïse’s idea to get the portraits transferred from Aubervilliers to Marianne’s office. Marianne personally anticipated the courier on a rainy morning, and went to store the portraits in the art storage room herself. In light of these new arrivals, she began to reach out to her contacts again, sending out her photographs of the pieces, wondering if any of them had unattributed works that dated back to the late eighteenth century.

After a lunch meeting with the education director from the Paris Museum of Modern Art, Marianne was walking to the metro for her next meeting when she felt her phone buzz in her pockets. The screen flashed Héloïse’s name. “Hello?”

“Marianne. Ça va?”

“Oui. Ça va,” Marianne responded. “What’s up?”

“My parents are in town, and they’d like to meet you, and see the other pieces you have,” Héloïse told her. “Is that okay? Are we able to drop by your office sometime today or tomorrow?”

Marianne dodged a pair of gilets jaunes on the footpath. “Uh, I’m actually out right now, but sure, they can come see the art,” she said. “I have one more meeting today. Should I call you when I’m on my way back to the office?”

“Sounds good,” Héloïse said. “I’ll see you then.”

After her meeting, Marianne went back to her office. She had just reached the door when Héloïse and a middle-aged couple rounded the street corner.

“There she is,” Héloïse told them, nodding towards Marianne, her hands stuffed in the pockets of her parka.

“Good timing,” the man said.

“These are my parents,” Héloïse said. She introduced her mother and father by their names.

Marianne shook both of their hands. “Enchantée,” she said. She tried to avoid staring at them too much, but she couldn’t help but take in their appearances. The mother was half a head shorter than Héloïse, her blonde hair in tight curls, with dark brows and demeanour that she had passed on to her daughter. The father was only a little taller than Héloïse. He had thick, light brown hair, and though his green eyes had a softness to them, the rest of his features tended towards the patrician.

She led the three of them upstairs. While she explained the function of the climate-controlled room to Héloïse’s parents, Héloïse was already shedding her backpack and her outerwear, hanging them up in sure, familiar movements.

The room had never felt so crowded before. Marianne was usually just in there with her father or her mother, but never the two of them at once. Most of the time, she was alone. There was still sufficient space for everyone to move around, so it was just Marianne feeling like her private space was being encroached upon. She gave them all pairs of gloves and then took out the pieces of artwork.

Her heart began to beat faster at the sight of all the art laid out on the workbench together.

Héloïse’s father clapped a hand over his mouth, in an attempt to conceal a gasp. “These portraits,” he said, lowering his hand. “My grandmother brought them over from Italy. Apparently, Héloïse,” he pointed at the woman in the portrait, “she was from France, but married a Milanese merchant.”

“So you’re Italian,” Marianne said.

“Technically. It’s complicated, isn’t it?” Héloïse’s father had a small smile on his face. “My grandmother moved just outside of Nice, in her early adulthood, trying to look for work. Apparently, according to my father, these portraits were one of the few things she had brought over from Italy.”

Marianne filed this information mentally.

Héloïse’s mother, on the other hand, moved her gaze from the portraits, to Héloïse, and then to the portraits again. She was frowning, as if it still hadn’t sunk in how much her daughter resembled her husband’s ancestor.

They ended up inviting Marianne to join them for dinner at a restaurant near the river.

The conversation was led by Héloïse’s parents, partly telling Marianne about their lives, and partly catching Héloïse up on what she was missing in Nice. They were the proprietors of one of Nice’s busiest farmers’ markets, and their lives seemed to revolve around their relationships with their vendors, suppliers and of course, their customers.

Marianne noticed that Héloïse didn’t seem all that interested in how her parents’ market was doing. She would respond briskly, or more often, would prompt them to continue using a low, assenting hum. Her parents didn’t comment on her behaviour, which indicated that this manner was characteristic for her. However, she _did_ perk up at the mention of her niece, her older sister’s daughter, who apparently was beginning to form full sentences.

Eventually, Marianne became the subject of conversation. Héloïse’s mother asked her about what her profession involved.

“Art consultancies deal with private clients, mostly, though we have some public ones, too, like a few museums and galleries here and there. We help with buying and appraising artworks, and getting our clients connected to important art services, such as conservators. My father used to be a conservator for the Louvre, so he has industry connections,” Marianne explained. “We also often get contracts from companies who want to lease or commission artwork for their offices. This is my mother’s specialty.”

“And what’s yours?” Héloïse’s mother asked.

Héloïse picked up her glass and made a show of swilling her wine around. “She’s a historian.” She took a sip.

“I, uh,” Marianne shook her head, “I did study art history, but my main role at the consultancy is to be in charge of appraising and also investigating potential significance of artworks. Clients like to know when they have something special.”

“What about those sketches of my ancestor?” Héloïse’s father asked.

“That’s a personal occupation of mine, something I do on top of my job,” Marianne said.

Héloïse’s father leaned forward, his elbow resting on the table, his chin resting on his palm. “If you discover something important, are you planning to sell your research?” he asked.

“Definitely not. I want it to be publicly available, so if anything comes up, I’ll be talking to my contacts at galleries or at the universities, to figure out a way to share and exhibit my work to everyone,” Marianne said.

“Surely those pieces would appreciate in value?” Héloïse’s father persisted. “How much would, say, the Louvre, pay to get them in their collection?” Next to him, Héloïse’s mother had a curious glint in her eye.

In her seat next to Marianne, Héloïse made a soft, huffing noise. Her hands disappeared under the table, where she picked at the cuffs of her sweater.

Marianne was used to these kinds of people in her line of work. She had just the right response: “Well, it really depends on the significance of their history, and I need to take the time to explore that.”

This seemed satisfactory to Héloïse’s parents. “Then I wish you the _best_ of luck, Marianne,” her father said.

As the evening wrapped up, Héloïse’s parents paid the bill, and were promptly pushed by their daughter into a taxi. They were staying in a hotel. Before they zoomed off, they said enthusiastic goodbyes to Marianne, with promises to talk soon.

Marianne and Héloïse stood on the sidewalk, both with their hands shoved in their pockets, watching the taxi’s tail lights fade in distance. Marianne opened her mouth, prepared to say goodbye to Héloïse, but Héloïse managed to speak first.

“Would you come walk with me along the river?”

“Sure,” Marianne said.

They went down to the riverbank. Héloïse swung her backpack around her front to access a small side pocket, where she fished out a carton of cigarettes. She pulled out a cigarette and looked at Marianne, her eyebrows raised.

Marianne accepted the cigarette. She placed it between her lips and watched as Héloïse took a lighter out of the same pocket. Marianne had to step closer to her so she could light it. As she took her first puff, Héloïse lit a cigarette of her own.

“I’ve been trying to switch to an e-cigarette,” Héloïse said, as she exhaled.

“But?”

“There’s just something about spending the evening with my parents...” Héloïse trailed off. “I’m so glad they’re going back to Nice the day after tomorrow.”

“Is that why you moved to Paris?” Marianne asked.

“Yes, but also because I wanted to work in publishing. Actually, I think those two desires were entwined,” Héloïse mused. “I feel like I owe you an apology on behalf of my parents. For tonight.”

Marianne, in the middle of an inhale of her cigarette, cut it short. “Why?”

“They have an embarrassing preoccupation with money and profit,” Héloïse said. “I’m sorry that they even dared to ask about the artwork that way.”

“Héloïse, no, it’s not a big deal,” Marianne said.

“It’s a big deal to me,” Héloïse said. “They continue to be obtuse about it. They wonder why I distance myself from them.” She stopped talking for a bit, focusing on finishing her cigarette. She stubbed it out on a nearby rubbish bin. “I suppose you don’t understand. You like your parents enough to work with them.”

Marianne stubbed her own cigarette out. “I understand enough. Parents can be tricky,” she said. “They have one idea of you, and they expect you to meet that, and then act like you’re a stranger when you turn out another way.”

Héloïse considered this for a moment. “Yes, you’re right,” she said. “Do you want another cigarette?”

“No, thank you,” Marianne said, shaking her head.

“Suit yourself.” With a shrug, Héloïse reached back in her bag for her cigarettes and lighter.

* * *

Amidst a hectic week of lunches, boardroom meetings, and site visits, Marianne was finally able to block out an afternoon to work in the art storage room, to examine the pieces more closely and to think about them. It required a unique kind of patience, to be able to stare at art for hours on end with no concrete goals in mind, but it was the way Marianne preferred to work.

Natalie was right; the longer Marianne examined the two portraits, the more she was sure that they were painted by different artists. The engagement portrait was painted in a distinctly different style than what was the convention at the time. Although it was the older of the two, its style reminded Marianne of works that were more modern.

Marianne had also received copies of the preliminary scans from Natalie, which revealed the different layers of paint on each of the portraits. It showed that they had been touched up throughout the years. Yet the most interesting detail to Marianne was the scanner’s image that showed the very first layers of paint on the engagement portrait. The woman’s face was not _too_ different at first glance, but upon closer inspection, her lips were in a deep scowl, and her gaze was an imperious glare, rather than an invitation. Portraits were journeys, Marianne knew, and discovering this shift from the initial layers to the final product raised more questions in her investigation.

She didn’t want to reduce history to mere storytelling, but it was natural to work out a story in her mind. A timeline of events, so to speak. This was how she saw it: the artist was hired to paint this woman’s engagement portrait. He sketched her in preparation, and then painted her. The portrait was sent off to Milan, to the man she would have been betrothed to, and the artist kept the sketches, along with creating the cameo. Years after that, the second portrait was painted, of the woman and her child. This was by a different artist. These two portraits were passed down in the same family through generations.

That left the painting of the lady with her dress on fire. Where did it fit into the timeline? Marianne figured that it was a painting of a memory, done some time after it had actually happened. It could be evidence that the artist and the woman spent time together outside of the studio. The other possibility was that it could be metaphorical, something that was painted as a symbol of the artist’s relationship with the woman who posed for him.

* * *

Someone _finally_ got back to Marianne, just when she was beginning to feel like she had all these open doors and nobody walking through them.

It was from a woman named Sophie, a student on a graduate fellowship at the Museum of Fine Arts of Rennes. She wrote to Marianne that the museum had in its archives several sketchbooks and folios, none with clear identifying markers, that were supposedly found in an old house in Quiberon before World War One. She sent through several scans of sketches: of a girl sitting at a kitchen table, seemingly doing embroidery, of a set of hands playing cards, and, strikingly, a woman standing on some vast landscape, with the hem of her dress aflame.

At the end of her email, Sophie invited Marianne to come look at the sketches in person.

Marianne responded immediately. As soon as she pressed send, she picked up her phone to call Héloïse.

* * *

Marianne believed that with two people, Rennes would be a more manageable drive, but Héloïse insisted that the train was a better option. “I told my boss that I wouldn’t fall behind on work, and I find trains are conducive to reading,” she had told Marianne, matter-of-factly. Marianne relented, upon the silent assumption that Héloïse would never offer to share driving duties.

They were to meet at the Gare du Nord early in the morning. Marianne got there, and despite the rush of people, spotted Héloïse right away. She was leaning casually against a column, her head covered in a beanie, her overnight bag by her feet. She chewed on her bottom lip as she read a book.

Marianne approached her. “Bonjour,” she said.

“Ça va?” Héloïse asked.

“Il fait froid,” Marianne said. “Sorry, were you waiting long?”

“Not at all.” Héloïse closed her book. “Let’s go to our platform.” She picked up her overnight bag, slung its strap on one shoulder, and walked ahead of Marianne towards the platforms. On the train, she showed Marianne her phone screen. “By the way, I read your article.”

Marianne read the title of her article on Héloïse’s phone. It was on the historiography of portraiture, or at least an attempt to explore the subject even further. The article focused on the clothing and the kinds of items that people chose to include when they had their portraits painted. She got it published in an academic art history journal nearly two years ago, and couldn’t quite believe that Héloïse had made the effort to find and read it. “Why?” was the first question out of her mouth.

“I’m curious about you,” Héloïse said, with a nonchalant shrug.

They transferred to the TGV at Gare de Massy. Settling into the window seat, Héloïse set up her laptop on the unlatched table. She took off her beanie and gathered her hair in a ponytail. She stretched her arms above her shoulders and then focused on her screen.

Marianne watched her for a minute, anticipating another, longer conversation, before deciding to put on her headphones, close her eyes and listen to music instead.

She was roused by some jostling. Opening her eyes, she saw Héloïse’s closed laptop. Héloïse herself was bent forward, digging around in her backpack, eventually straightening up with a lunch container in hand. 

It wasn’t until she had opened the lunch container and produced a neatly cut half of a sandwich that she noticed that Marianne was awake.

“How long was I sleeping for?” Marianne asked her.

“About forty minutes.” Héloïse took a bite of her sandwich. “Want the other half of this?”

Marianne shook her head. Consciously, she touched her stomach, suddenly aware of the fact that she hadn’t eaten since before leaving home that morning. “Uh, no, thanks, I’ll go to the café-bar,” she said. She didn’t even think to pack snacks with her. She reached for her purse in her satchel. “Do you want anything?” she asked Héloïse.

“I’m not one for train food,” Héloïse said, after swallowing a mouthful of sandwich. “But I’ll have a Coke, please.”

“Regular?”

Héloïse fixed her no-nonsense stare on Marianne. “Is there any other kind?”

With an uncertain chuckle, Marianne stood up and headed out to locate the café-bar. She returned a few minutes later to Héloïse eating the second half of her sandwich while reading her book one-handed. Marianne opened the can of Coke for her and set it down on the table.

“Merci,” Héloïse said, not taking her eyes off her book.

“Is that for work?” Marianne asked.

“Palate cleanser,” Héloïse said. “I was getting tired of the one I was reading for work.” She closed the book and placed it on top of her laptop. She turned to look at Marianne. “I think you’re a decent writer. I skimmed through the other articles in that journal and none of them were as accessible as you were.”

“In academia, I’m not sure being accessible is a compliment.”

“Who _cares_ about academia? You could write a book, you know,” Héloïse said. “I know people who could publish it.”

Marianne raised an eyebrow. “You publish art history books?”

“No, but my boss, she used to work for the university press at the Sorbonne. She could get you in touch with some people,” Héloïse responded.

“I don’t know what I’d write a book about,” Marianne admitted. “So, how did you end up in that publishing house?”

“I wanted to find a permanent job in Paris after finishing my degree, so one of my literature professors told me about a friend of his that had started up her own publishing house, after years of working at the university press,” Héloïse explained. “He got us in touch, and she gave me a job as ‘junior editor’ right away… We were a much smaller press at the time, though, so everyone was an ‘editor’, even if their job was mostly administration, like mine was. But we eventually grew. We’re still small, compared to the bigger guys out there, but I like it better that way.”

“And you’re an editor now?”

Héloïse nodded. “I specialise in acquisitions rather than actual editing, though I do a bit of that, too, just because there’s so few of us,” she said. “I like to discover writers, especially ones that are younger and writing contemporary fiction. But a significant part of our income actually is made by publishing translations of English-language young adult novels.”

This surprised Marianne. “Really?”

“Teenagers can’t get enough of them,” Héloïse said. “I try and read as many of those novels as I can get my hands on, so we can get them translated and released as quickly as possible.”

“I have to admit I don’t read much fiction anymore, let alone teen novels,” Marianne said.

Héloïse shrugged. “The stories are boilerplate, and the writing can be pedestrian, but what I’ve learned is that we can’t underestimate how badly people want to see themselves in stories. Sometimes the desire to see ourselves can be greater than the desire to know others,” she said. “Think about it. It’s why both of us have our jobs.” She shifted in her seat. “Have you ever wondered about what’s on page twenty-eight?”

“Pardon?”

Héloïse nodded towards the tablet that was resting on Marianne’s lap. “Open the portrait of her as a mother.”

Marianne obliged. She held up the tablet and they looked at the portrait together. They fixed their attention to the book in the woman’s hand, her finger holding the page in place. On the corner of the page—the digit _28_.

“In that article you wrote,” Héloïse began. “You talked about the mise-en-scène of portraiture, right? Everything in the frame has a purpose. Everything in the frame signals a message.” She pointed at the book in the woman’s hand. “Have you thought about what this means?”

Marianne noticed it before, but in her search for the artist, decoding the small details on a painting that he ostensibly did not paint were not high on her list of priorities. Admittedly, it had _fallen_ off the list. “No, not really,” she said honestly.

Héloïse just nodded in response.

It was past midday by the time they walked into the lobby of their hotel. They checked into their separate rooms, which were on the same floor, but in opposite directions. They bid each other a stilted, temporary goodbye. It made Marianne wince as she was walking away. They were seeing each other again in an hour.

* * *

Sophie, the graduate fellow, was waiting for them when they arrived at the Museum of Fine Arts. She was a short-statured young woman, with dark hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. She seemed genuinely excited to meet Marianne. When she looked at Héloïse to shake her hand, her jaw dropped. “Wait a minute -” she began.

“She’s my ancestor,” Héloïse offered as an explanation.

“Huh.” Sophie stared at her for another moment. “That’s _insane_ ,” she told Marianne.

Marianne simply shrugged. It was insane for all of them.

As Sophie led them to the archives, she talked about her masters programme, which involved her working at the museum three days a week. Most of her job involved front-facing tasks, like giving guided tours and working with the education team. She told them that she enjoyed these, but she loved getting to spend time in the archives, just browsing the infinite amount of artwork available.

They stopped in front of a workbench, with their archival gloves on.

“Feel free to start anywhere,” Sophie said, gesturing to the number of sketchbooks and folios placed on the bench.

Héloïse reached for a sketchbook and began looking through it, her fingers turning the pages with the lightest of touches that she could manage. Marianne looked over her shoulder and caught glimpses of the sketches. There were some sketches of facial features and body parts that belonged to no one, some rough sketches of children playing, some landscapes, and one particularly arresting snapshot of a coastline, with an approaching boat visible in the midground.

Marianne pulled a folio towards her. “These are newer,” she noted, referring to the material of the folios. She opened it, revealing a thick sheaf of papers inside.

“Yes, according to the records, they were found in a box that was falling apart,” Sophie said. “I’m surprised the moisture didn’t eat away at them completely.”

Before looking through the folio, Marianne looked over at Héloïse, who was examining more sketches of her ancestor. “Is that…?”

Héloïse turned the sketchbook towards Marianne. “Yes,” she said. On the page, in quick lines of charcoal, was a portrait of her ancestor sitting on the ground somewhere, wearing a hooded cape. The skirt of her dress bunched up around her, and its fabric seemed to bear a faint brocade pattern. The bottom half of her face was covered in a scarf, which appeared to be tied back around her head. Only the faintest outline of her lips could be seen. Her eyes were looking out, somewhere beyond the artist.

“The cliffs in the background look like the coastline around here,” Sophie remarked.

“She must have been on a beach, then,” Héloïse said.

“So she was from Bretagne, some seaside village,” Marianne said. “And the artist? You said these were found in an old house. Do you think he must have lived there?”

“I don’t think the artist is from Bretagne,” Héloïse said, with an infuriating certainty that rankled Marianne.

“You’ve only ever seen his works where he drew or painted Bretagne,” Marianne said. “What makes you think that he’s not from here?”

“That evening my parents came to visit, you told us that the original source of the sketches and that portrait was from an abandoned building in the middle of Paris. You said that the building used to be an artist’s studio,” Héloïse said. “I’m not an art historian, but to me, it doesn’t make sense for an eighteenth century artist to have _two_ studios and still have _nobody_ recognise his work. He must have moved at some point, but never kept two places at once.”

“That’s a bold theory. _You_ don’t know that,” Marianne retorted, placing her hands on her hips.

“It’s just a feeling I have,” Héloïse said, in a tone that was meant to be casual, but sounded like she meant to speak through gritted teeth.

In her attempt to defuse the rising tension between the two women, Sophie had opened another folio. She had one of the sketches in her hand. “Look,” she told them. The woman’s sleeping face, rendered intimately.

Marianne inhaled sharply.

Héloïse stared at the sketch with such intensity that Marianne almost feared that the fragile piece of paper would burst into flames. And then she noticed something over Sophie’s shoulder. “What’s that?” she asked.

Sophie turned around. She replaced the sketch of the sleeping woman in the folio, and then took out the one that Héloïse had spotted.

“Orpheus and Eurydice,” Marianne whispered. She reached out, wanting to touch the two lovers in the sketch, facing each other, waving goodbye. Her hand stopped halfway on its journey there. It took effort to fully retract it.

Sophie didn’t display the same hesitation. With the lightest of touches, she pointed at the rocky coast in the background. “That’s definitely Bretagne,” she said.

“Can I have a scan of this?” Marianne said. She planned to send it to her father. Elaborate sketches like these usually were made in preparation for paintings. He could get started on the search while she was still in Rennes.

“Sure,” Sophie said. She took the sketch and walked to the other side of the room.

Before they left the museum, Héloïse surprised everyone, perhaps including herself, when she invited Sophie out to dinner.

* * *

“I don’t presume to know anything about art -” Héloïse said, two glasses of wine in.

“Really?” Marianne cut her off, eyebrows raised. “Because you talk like you do.” It would have been a barbed comment had she said it earlier, but she felt good saying it at this moment, like she was already allowed to cross that boundary with Héloïse. Marianne thought they were at that level. Or she could be fooled by the amount of wine she has had.

But Héloïse laughed, a foreign yet pleasant sound that startled Marianne, and perhaps Sophie, too, judging by how her eyes widened. “What I’m trying to say is that this has been an education for me,” she said. “I didn’t grow up in a family that appreciated art, despite my father having had those portraits all along.”

“That artist, he did such great hands,” Sophie commented.

“ _Fantastic_ hands,” Marianne said.

“Are hands _that_ tricky to draw?” Héloïse asked.

Marianne and Sophie exchanged a look.

“Here, give me yours.” Marianne reached towards Héloïse, who offered her hands hesitantly. Marianne took them and gently arranged them in different poses as she explained: “It takes a certain level of skill and technique to not draw hands like mangled extensions of someone’s body. They need to look proportionate, especially in relation to each other. They need to look natural… They’re one of the most expressive parts of the body. A closed fist,” she closed Héloïse’s right hand, “is different from an open palm.” She unfurled Héloïse’s fingers again.

Héloïse watched Marianne’s hands playing with hers. Her lips were curved in a small smile.

“However, I think ears are trickier, in painting anyway,” Marianne finished. She released Héloïse’s hands. “Don’t you agree, Sophie?”

“Oh, definitely,” Sophie said. “It’s all that cartilage.” She tugged on her own ear for emphasis. “It catches light differently compared to the rest of the skin on the face.”

“See!” Héloïse snapped her fingers. “I’m getting an education.”

Sophie chuckled. “Can I ask you something?” she said to Héloïse.

Héloïse nodded.

“How does it feel to be investigating your ancestor who looks almost exactly like you?”

“And has the same name as me,” Héloïse said.

“What?” Sophie turned to Marianne. “I didn’t know that.”

“Oui, c’est vrai,” Marianne confirmed, before pouring herself more wine. “Coincidences are inherently bizarre. This one,” she nodded at Héloïse’s face, “more than most.”

“Wow. This has been a mind-blowing day.” Sophie leaned back in her chair. “But answer my question. How does it feel?”

Héloïse thought about it for a moment. She swirled the contents of her wine glass, before drinking it. She placed the glass back on the table. “I didn’t predict how much her story would matter to me,” she admitted. “At the same time, I want to know what she meant to him. Imagine, thinking of someone so much that you could reproduce their image to infinity.”

While Sophie nodded, mostly in awe, Marianne just watched Héloïse. Her hair was unruly, and her cheeks were flushed from the wine. Marianne wasn’t quite attuned to the way Héloïse thought. She was aloof one moment and then blunt the next. But Marianne was sure of one thing: they cared about the same thing now.

“She must have been his muse,” Sophie said, a little starry-eyed. “That’s romantic.”

“Maybe there’s a tragic element to it all.” The idea had been bouncing around inside Marianne’s head for a while, but this evening, she felt like saying it out loud. “He was a promising artist, and they fell madly in love with each other, but through that portrait that he painted, he ended up having to give her up,” she said. “And that just put him out of sorts. He mustn’t have been able to work on much else since.”

“And that’s why he stayed unknown?” Sophie asked.

“If that’s true, then it made sense why he would have moved to Quiberon from Paris,” Héloïse said. “He probably felt like there was nothing left for him there.”

* * *

They returned to Paris the following evening, and the next day, Marianne returned to work. She pushed the research project aside to focus on emails and paperwork and finishing up appraisals. She then worked through the tasks her mother had emailed her, which involved dealing, once again, with the people from Sotheby’s. After a quick lunch, she got ready to meet a client who ran a private gallery.

On the metro there, she read a thin volume about engagement portraits in the late 1800s. She wasn’t enjoying it. It was an obscure book, written in esoteric French, in the tiniest font conceivable. Marianne tried to skim through it quickly, in hopes of finding clues, perhaps about a rising star in the Academy that just suddenly dropped off and never produced anything noteworthy again. Possibly because of the heartbreak caused by his short-term love affair.

Marianne couldn’t imagine it. She had always been the person who was open to new experiences, but she never let herself get swept away by them. She was just, simply, trying new things. This artist, however, seemed to fall headlong and hadn’t managed to pick himself back up. Marianne didn’t know if she should be afraid of something that could just consume a person like that.

* * *

The footsteps increased in volume as they approached her office.

“Marianne, Marianne, chérie.” Marianne’s door creaked open. Her father stood in the doorway, his hair sticking up in places, as it usually did, his eyes wide. “You need to go over to the Louvre archives right now.”

“What?” Marianne withdrew her hands from her laptop keyboard, where she was typing an email. “Why?”

“Your mystery artist,” her father said. “The Louvre has his Orpheus.”

“What?” Marianne said again, though this time, she flew out of her seat. She began to toss items in her satchel: her camera, her notebook, her transport card. And then she grabbed her phone and rang Héloïse. As she waited for the call to connect, she looked at her father again. “You’re sure it’s the same Orpheus?”

“It matches the sketch you sent,” her father said.

Héloïse picked up on the other end. “Hello?”

“Hey, are you free right now?” Marianne asked. “Papa said that the Orpheus painting is in the Louvre archives.”

Marianne’s father raised a finger. “One last thing,” he said.

“What is it?”

He smiled. “The painting is attributed.”

“Héloïse!” Marianne exclaimed. “Did you hear that?”

Even Héloïse, whose voice was normally steady, nearly deadpan, sounded worked up. “Yes!” she said, her voice crackling on the phone’s speakers. “I’m leaving work right now. I’ll meet you at the Palais Royal.”

“Yes, see you there,” Marianne said. She hung up and tossed her phone into her satchel. She crossed her office to grab her coat, and then walked back to zip up her satchel and sling it over her shoulder. She stopped to face her father. “Papa,” she breathed. She placed her hands on his shoulders and kissed his cheek several times, before wrapping him in a tight hug. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

* * *

Marianne and Héloïse made their way across the throngs of tourists and gilets jaunes scattered along the Louvre’s front courtyard. They passed the Place du Carousel and kept walking until they reached the Portes des Lions entrance. There, Marianne showed her business card at the front desk and explained that one of the archivists was expecting her.

Héloïse seemed surprised, if not impressed, that they were shown straight through, without an employee volunteering to accompany them. “You know this place well,” she said. “And _they_ know that you know.”

“I grew up here, quite literally,” Marianne said. “My father was an in-house conservator. He would take a break to pick me up from school and then I’d have to sit and keep myself busy for another couple of hours before we went home.”

“Oh.” Héloïse nodded. “You had free reign of the exhibits?”

Marianne snorted. “Of course not. It’s still the _Louvre_. When I was smaller and cuter, the docents would take me around, but when they were busy or there weren’t any of them, I hung around the archives watching Papa and his colleagues work.” She pushed open a door, and a middle-aged woman with short, grey hair looked up from her work. “Geneviève!” she exclaimed, grinning.

“Marianne!” the woman said, with the same enthusiasm. She stood up and walked towards Marianne, and kissed her on each cheek. “Your Papa told me you were on your way.” She patted Marianne’s left cheek gently. “How are you? You’re so beautiful! And we have matching hairstyles!”

“Thank you, but I’m not quite as dignified as you yet.” As Geneviève laughed, Marianne gestured to Héloïse. “Uh, this is Héloïse, she’s been working on the investigation with me,” she told Geneviève.

“Enchantée,” Héloïse said, offering her hand.

Geneviève shook it heartily. “ _You’re_ beautiful, too… Do you work at the consultancy?”

“No, I work in publishing,” Héloïse said.

“Writing a book about this already, dear?” Geneviève’s eyes were wide as she trained them back on Marianne.

“Oh no, this is a purely personal interest.” To Geneviève, Héloïse’s expression appeared to remain neutral, but Marianne’s practiced eye caught the slight quirking at the corner of her lips. “Though I do remind Marianne that I’ve got contacts ready to go, if she feels the need to write a book.”

“Wouldn’t that be delightful? She and her mother could co-write it. They’re the brains of the family.” Geneviève covered her mouth in mock coyness. “Don’t tell her father that I said that!” She clapped her hands together. “Anyway, you’re here for the Orpheus. Follow me.” She beckoned them over a few aisles down the archives. She ran her finger along the drawers until she found the one that she was looking for. “Here we go.” She pulled it out and rested it on a nearby workbench.

There it was, the charcoal sketch come to life. The colours were more vivid than Marianne expected them to be. The artist had made excellent use of the space. The background was of the sky in a brilliant white-blue, blending into the saturated blue of the sea below its horizon. In the midground, an outcrop of jagged rock, capped by an archway, all shadows and sharp edges. And in the foreground, a dark-haired Orpheus, clad only in a blue cloak, turned away so that his face was not visible. He was waving goodbye to a blonde Eurydice, wearing an airy, sleeveless white dress, positioned slightly further into the middle of the painting, her arm also raised in a wave as she fell backwards into the unseen.

Marianne examined it from a more technical perspective. Again, there was that modern, almost anachronistic style. She turned to Geneviève. “When was this first shown?” she asked.

“In 1776, it was exhibited at the Salon,” Geneviève said. “The painter was Fabien Charles Boucher.”

Marianne racked her brain. “Never heard of him,” she said.

“Not many people have. I actually had to do a little bit more reading on him, when your father asked me to look for this Orpheus. Boucher was what I like to call a trades painter,” Geneviève said. “The academy approved of him, and he seemed to have steady patronage, but he wasn’t making mind-blowing works of art, you know? He painted portraits for aristocrats, and then put out the occasional tribute to mythology now and again.” She gestured at the painting. “Hence, this.”

“Do you have more of his works?” Héloïse asked.

“A lot of his portraits are family heirlooms, so they’ve stayed in those families, or are shown in smaller galleries, but we have photographs of a number of them that I can show you,” Geneviève said. “And we have a handful of his other paintings here that I’ll pull out for you, too, if you like.”

“Very much so, merci,” Marianne said.

Héloïse’s lips were pursed. “Do you know if Boucher lived in Bretagne for a while? Specifically Quiberon?” she asked.

Geneviève looked almost apologetic. “We don’t actually have much information about Boucher’s personal history. He was just a working artist with a consistent output. He didn’t reinvent the wheel or anything like that, so there wasn’t much writing about him,” she said. She paused for a second, visibly thinking. “I could print off a record of all the portraits we know he’s done, if that would be helpful for you.”

Héloïse looked at Marianne. “We could see if any of those portraits were from the Breton nobility,” she said.

Marianne shrugged. “Yeah, Geneviève, that record might be helpful,” she said.

“Okay!” Geneviève clapped her hands again, as if to punctuate moving into a new task. She puttered around the archives, leaving Marianne and Héloïse with Orpheus and Eurydice.

* * *

Something didn’t add up. Or it added up, but not in the way Marianne expected, or wanted. Marianne mulled over this on the metro. She was on her way back to the office from visiting a client. She pored over the records from Geneviève, then went over her notes again. There was a hitch in her theory. She needed to process it.

She got off the train she was on and transferred onto another line. She disembarked at her intended stop and made her way aboveground. She practically ran towards Héloïse’s office building. Upon reaching the publishing house’s floor, she asked the receptionist if Héloïse was available.

“She should be,” the receptionist said. “Should I let you know that you’re here to see her?”

But Marianne was already halfway down the corridor. Héloïse’s door was ajar. She knocked on it twice, and pushed it open. “Salut,” she said.

Héloïse looked up from her computer screen. “You’re out of breath,” she observed.

Marianne stepped inside the office. “Are you busy? I want to talk through something regarding the research.”

“I’m just about to finish, actually,” Héloïse said. She stood up and began packing her things into her backpack. She unrolled the sleeves of her light blue shirt, buttoned the cuffs, and then pulled her navy sweater on top of it. She put her parka on and shouldered her backpack. “Come, let’s go to my apartment.”

“Really?”

Héloïse shrugged. “There’ll be food there, and wine.”

Héloïse’s apartment building was a newer one, compared to Marianne’s. She lived on the third floor. As she turned on the lights, Marianne took in the details of the apartment. The lounge was furnished with a couch, a coffee table, and a bookcase that nearly covered one wall. There was a small, flat-screen TV in the corner of the room. The kitchen was cluttered with jars and cooking utensils, but not messy. Héloïse’s dining table only had seats for two people, but it didn’t show much evidence of being used for eating, as the surface had disappeared under books and papers.

“I’ll open the windows?” Héloïse asked. “I don’t think it’s too cold.”

Marianne nodded, as she took her coat off and hung it on a spare peg on Héloïse’s coat tree.

“You can sit anywhere you like.”

Marianne chose the couch. She put her satchel on her lap and dug for the folder where she kept the records of Boucher’s paintings. She opened the folder and prepared to launch into what was bothering her.

“Wait, not yet,” Héloïse said, interrupting her before she even got to speak. She fussed around the kitchen. She walked over to Marianne with two glasses: white wine and sparkling water. She set it on coasters and moved them towards Marianne, her eyes expectant.

“Merci.” Marianne sipped the wine first.

“Something’s thrown your theory off, hasn’t it?” Héloïse asked.

“How did you know?”

Héloïse pointed at Marianne’s hands, restless fingers taking turns picking at each other. “You’re not usually a fidgeter,” she said. “You only do that when you’re troubled.”

“Oh.” So Héloïse has known her troubled.

“I hope you don’t mind me cooking as you talk. I like to have dinner early.” Héloïse stood up. She took her sweater off, dropping it casually on the coffee table, and then she began rolling her sleeves up to her elbow. She walked to the kitchen and donned an apron, and rummaged through her fridge and pantry. She eventually set up a workstation for herself, with vegetables laid out next to a cutting board.

“What are you making?” Marianne asked.

“Just some pasta,” Héloïse said. “You’re not allergic to anything, are you?”

Marianne shook her head.

Héloïse began grating vegetables into a bowl. “Now, tell me.”

“Boucher’s first painting that was shown in the Salon was dated 1740,” Marianne said. “The Orpheus was shown in 1776, and we know that the tests on the paintings we have showed that they were also painted around that time, obviously a bit before. Boucher’s a much older man than I thought he would be.”

“You thought he was a young, up and coming artist who discovered a muse,” Héloïse said.

“Yes,” Marianne said. “I found some short bits of writing on him, at the research library. He was born around 1718 to 1720. Your ancestor -”

“Héloïse,” Héloïse said.

“Yes, she couldn’t have been older than thirty when Boucher painted her portrait,” Marianne said, not quite mustering up the confidence to call the woman in the paintings by her name. “That would have put a nearly-three decade age difference between them.”

As a way to prompt her, Héloïse hummed.

“Boucher was also married, until the day he died,” Marianne said. “And he had two daughters. Nothing much on them, but reading between the lines, the elder daughter would be older than your ancestor.”

“Right.” Héloïse placed the grater in the sink, and then picked up a knife to start on the onion and garlic. “I can understand why that would have made you feel uncomfortable,” she said, above the thuds of the knife on the cutting board. “But isn’t that, sad to say, not surprising at all? All these older, creative men making work about beautiful, younger women, and they get creepy and obsessed with them… It’s a tale as old as time. There’s a story to be told in that. That it’s not just a modern thing, it’s been going on for centuries.”

“I _know_ that.” The words came out sharper than Marianne intended, but Héloïse didn’t flinch. She drank more wine, and then pinched the bridge of her nose. She continued in a quieter tone: “I just didn’t want it to be the story I told.”

“But as a researcher, you must feel like it’s your duty to tell the stories you do find,” Héloïse said. “I’m sorry that it’s looking like a disappointment.”

“Don’t be.” Marianne waved her off. “I got too idealistic.”

“You’re a romantic.”

Marianne laughed emptily. “Maybe I am,” she said. “Why does it sound so bad when you say it?”

“Does it?” Héloïse turned around to preheat the pan. She faced Marianne again. “I don’t mean it that way. I admire you, actually, and I see where you’re coming from. Why do you think I do what I do for a living?”

“It sucks that Boucher turned out to be a creep,” Marianne said, looking down at her glass of wine.

From across the room, Héloïse’s eyes were wide and clear as she fixed them on Marianne. “What if she loved him back?” she asked. “You realise, all we’ve been working on is his side of the story. We don’t know how _she_ felt about him. After all, we know that they spent time together outside of the studio. Those sketches on the beach, the painting of her dress on fire.”

Marianne sighed. “She was a woman in the eighteenth century,” she said. “Her side, whatever that may look like, probably doesn’t exist. The one-sided story doesn’t look good for Boucher.”

“I don’t understand your concern with things looking good,” Héloïse remarked. “Can’t things just be the way they are?”

“But then we don’t know what that way is if we don’t know all sides of the story,” Marianne retorted.

At this, Héloïse blinked wordlessly. Finally, she exhaled. “Touché,” she said.

Marianne recognised she was being petulant. “I’ve hit a wall,” she said apologetically, burying her face between her hands. It was the woman in the paintings that she wanted to know about, and she didn’t know anything about her, and she didn’t like what she possibly knew about the man who painted her.

“I think you’ve been thinking too much. Working too much,” Héloïse said. “I’ll let you vent some more, but you need a break, you know. So when I finish cooking this, we’re going to stop talking about Boucher and his paintings, d’accord?”

Marianne looked up at Héloïse and saw the sincere smile on her face. “Oui.”

Around twenty minutes later, Héloïse walked over to the couch with a bowl of pasta in each hand. She gave one to Marianne. It was penne and mushrooms with some sort of garlicky tomato base, covered in shavings of parmesan. After the first few mouthfuls, the words were out before Marianne could stop herself: “I didn’t expect you to be a good cook.”

Héloïse’s expression took on one of mild affront, although her eyes were amused. “My parents own a farmers’ market,” she said. “It would be a shame if I was a bad cook.”

“Clearly not the greatest of hosts, though, seeing as we’re sitting here and not at the dining table,” Marianne teased.

“Sorry.” Héloïse grimaced at the sight of the table. “I’ve let my work pile up a bit, literally. I’ll clean it up during the weekend.”

“It’s not because of me, is it?” Marianne frowned. When they spent time together, Héloïse rarely talked about her work. It was easy to consider her a full-time research companion, rather than someone who had nothing in it but personal stakes, and minor ones at that. “I apologise if you’ve fallen behind because I always call you and invite you to look at things.”

“Oh no, that’s fine, Marianne, really,” Héloïse said. “My boss is happy that I’m a bit distracted. She thinks my work has a radiance to it when I’m not reading all the time.”

“Surely you’re not reading _all_ the time.”

Héloïse shrugged. “I always believed it’s what keeps me on top of my game at work, but I guess she thought I was being single-minded. When I told her about this thing with the paintings, she said she hoped it would bring me new inspiration.”

“And have you?” Marianne realised she was leaning forward eagerly.

Héloïse murmured unintelligibly, before she downed half a glass of wine in one go. “I think so.”

“What else do you do? Besides reading?” Marianne asked.

“I go out to see bands play music,” Héloïse said.

“What kind of bands?”

“Oh, you know,” Héloïse said. “Rock, punk, some New Wave revivals.”

Marianne wrinkled her nose. She didn’t take Héloïse for that type.

“What? Too _masculine_ for you?” Héloïse joked.

“No, too conventional,” Marianne said. “Have you ever gone to a club?”

Héloïse laughed. “I’m a twenty-eight-year-old lesbian woman in Paris, of course I’ve gone to a club,” she said.

“Did you like it?”

“Not a big fan of the crap beer and the cocktails based on energy drinks,” Héloïse said.

“Oh, not all of them are like that,” Marianne said. “We should go out sometime. I know a great place.” As soon as she said it, Marianne found that she braced herself for the inevitable refusal.

“Well,” Héloïse’s lips quirked, “I did say that I thought you’ve been working too much, so if this is a chance to give you a break…”

“Are you sure?” Marianne was taken aback by Héloïse’s quick acceptance of the suggestion.

Héloïse nodded. She smiled at Marianne, a full-blown grin with teeth and all, her blue-green eyes the softest they had ever been.

For some reason, at that moment, Marianne realised that Héloïse trusted her to take her anywhere.

* * *

The thought she had about Boucher still stung. She resumed her tasks at work with a robotic efficiency, trying to avoid the inevitable desire to sit down and write an outline for a potential article about Boucher. A married man, a reasonably successful artist who had steady patrons and salon showings… going mad over a young woman nearly half his age. The evidence pointed to Boucher moving to Quiberon later in his life. Did he take his wife with him? Did his wife see the sketchbooks and the folios? Did he ever get to tell anyone about this woman and what she meant to him?

These were questions Marianne didn’t particularly want the answers to.

Héloïse was right; Marianne could only write about the story she found. But there _had_ to be more. She started her research with no intention of writing about a tortured artist, a man in love, how love became a destructive obsession. What greatness did Boucher miss out on by devoting the rest of his life to a woman he could never have had? That line of inquiry had been done to death by other art historians, and even if they weren’t sick of it, Marianne surely was. She had hoped that she would find something more about the woman, and yet, all the roads explored led to Fabien Charles Boucher, and none of them pointed anywhere that proposed a fresh revelation in the history of art.

Marianne kneaded at a knot in her shoulder. Mind and body were crying out for a break. She packed up for the day, but before she left the office, she sent Héloïse a message.

* * *

They met outside Héloïse’s apartment building. Héloïse had come down with a different silhouette from what Marianne was accustomed to: Doc Martens, grey jeans, a black bomber jacket, and a bright red scarf. “On y va,” Héloïse said, gesturing for Marianne to lead the way.

Marianne took her to her favourite spot for dancing, a small club on the edges of Le Marais. In the short queue to go inside, she turned to Héloïse. “Do you dance?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Héloïse said.

“What do you mean? You don’t know _how_ to dance?”

“I mean, I don’t know if I’m the dancing kind,” Héloïse said.

“So what do you do when you go see your rock bands?” Marianne asked.

Héloïse’s brow furrowed. “Nod my head along, yell the lyrics out with them sometimes,” she said.

“Okay, so this is just the same thing, except you’re going to be moving more of your body,” Marianne said.

“Okay.”

“Wait, you’ve been to a club before, right? What did you do then?” Marianne asked.

Héloïse shoved her hands in her pockets, and her eyes fell to the ground in front of her. “I, uh, I just stood by the bar and watched people, mostly,” she said.

Marianne laughed. “No wonder you knew that they put energy drinks in the cocktails.”

Inside, the club was dark, with blue and white neon lights cutting through the crowd. The walls shook with the music, as if following the movements of the people dancing along. After stashing their things at the coat check, they watched for a bit on the fringes of the dance floor. There were a mix of ages, encompassing all genders, from young people dancing energetically with their friends, to older ones gyrating together. 

Marianne turned to look at Héloïse, whose eyes were fixed intently on the scene, her jaw set. She knew that Héloïse had a guarded quality about her that sometimes manifested as awkwardness, but she didn’t think that Héloïse was particularly shy or anxious about being in these kinds of situations. She took Héloïse’s hand in hers, and before either of them had the chance to think about it, she pulled Héloïse into the crowd, stopping when they were somewhere in the middle. She turned to face Héloïse, releasing her hand in the process.

The DJ switched to a new song. Robyn’s alluring voice and the resonant synth chords slid into a pulsing beat, which the bodies on the dance floor fell into rhythm, Marianne among them, with Héloïse having no choice but to match her. Marianne tried not to watch her, worried about making her self-conscious, but Héloïse was not a bad dancer at all, if a bit too focused on moving her shoulders. She moved to the beat, rocking her head from side to side, her eyes half-closed. Robyn’s staccato vocals gave way to the music building to a climax, holding the notes longer, the electronica riff getting louder, the snare adding some elaborate flair to the undercurrent. Marianne and Héloïse moved closer together. As the song went into its refrain, Marianne reached out to place a hand on Héloïse’s waist. Their thighs were inches apart, their feet just about trampling over each other. Héloïse’s eyes opened, looking straight into Marianne’s. Illuminated by the occasional beam of light, Marianne could see that there was a new boldness in them. Héloïse moved her hips more fluidly, losing herself more in the music. And Marianne followed suit, like their bodies were magnetised.

By the time the song went into its second refrain, they were impossibly close. Héloïse had draped her arms around Marianne’s neck and shoulders, and Marianne could feel Héloïse’s breath on her skin. She could see the beads of sweat forming around Héloïse’s hairline. At this distance, Marianne couldn’t help but stare, and her thoughts inevitably went to the woman who shared the same face, and how, despite Boucher’s best efforts, she could never look as alive as the woman in front of Marianne at this moment.

Robyn began to fade out as the DJ lined up another track. Héloïse seemed to break out of a reverie, retracting her arms from Marianne, and stepping back, as much as she could, out of Marianne’s personal space. Her eyes were wide, and the crease in her forehead was slightly pronounced, but Marianne couldn’t interpret exactly what she was feeling. When the new song faded in, Héloïse had turned on her heel and walked away from the dance floor.

Marianne wasn’t sure what happened just then, but she didn’t want to chase after Héloïse just yet. Instead, she pushed past the crowd to approach the bar. She ordered a shot of vodka, which she promptly downed. She asked for a second one, and then a third, the burn growing less intense each time. She scanned her surroundings, trying to see if Héloïse was still inside. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand. Muttering curses to herself, she went to the coat check. Maybe Héloïse would come find her outside, if she wasn’t already there. She pulled her coat on and stumbled outside.

“Did you see a woman come out earlier?” she asked the bouncer. “My height, big red scarf?”

The bouncer nodded. “She went around the corner for a smoke, I think,” he said, pointing towards the entrance of an alley.

“Oh. Merci.” Wrapping her coat tight around her, Marianne walked to the alley, which was lit dimmer than the street. There was a lone, familiar figure there, exhaling a cloud of vapour from an e-cigarette with a blinking green LED. “Héloïse,” Marianne breathed.

Héloïse turned to look at Marianne.

Marianne walked over until she was standing in front of Héloïse. They stared at each other.

Héloïse took another puff of her e-cigarette, then blew out, the vapour momentarily obscuring her face. She pressed a button on the e-cigarette, presumably to turn it off, and then dropped it into her pocket. She took a step towards Marianne.

Marianne closed the distance between them. Their lips met. Héloïse’s were warm and sweet, the taste mingling with the traces of vodka on Marianne’s. Marianne’s hand burrowed into the space between Héloïse’s scarf and her neck. As she deepened the kiss, she traced her thumb along Héloïse’s jaw, encouraging her to open her mouth. She slipped her tongue into Héloïse’s mouth, gasping as Héloïse’s own tongue slid against hers. In response, Héloïse hummed in pleasure, her arms finding their way around Marianne’s waist to pull her in, so their bodies were in full contact. Her hands started roaming up and down Marianne’s back and sides.

Somehow, to Marianne, this felt inevitable.

* * *

They couldn’t get out of there fast enough, even if they both made a good show of being patient. Marianne didn’t dare touch Héloïse as they figured out a way home, because she was afraid that if she started, she wouldn’t stop.

The club was closer to Marianne’s place, so they took a taxi there. They didn’t speak in the taxi. They didn’t even touch. But as Marianne was unlocking her apartment door, she felt the warmth of Héloïse’s body behind her. She turned her head to look at Héloïse, who was smirking, fully aware of the effect her actions were having on Marianne.

Once inside, Marianne locked her door and turned on the lights while Héloïse had a look around, shedding her scarf and jacket and tossing them on a nearby armchair. Marianne toed off her shoes, and Héloïse did the same, but with much more ceremony, unlacing her boots and yanking them off, each boot landing on the floor with a thud. 

Shoeless and jacketless, Héloïse stood there, in the middle of Marianne’s small living room. Marianne couldn’t wait any longer. She walked over to her and wrapped her in an embrace, burrowing her face into the skin where Héloïse’s neck and shoulder met. Héloïse’s body was tense at first, and gradually yielded, her arms circling around Marianne’s body. She dipped her head down as well, and Marianne felt Héloïse’s lips and nose on her neck. Héloïse’s hands moved around to Marianne’s front, fingers curling around the lapels of Marianne’s coat. She took a half-step backward, creating enough space so she could push Marianne’s coat off of her shoulders.

As soon as the coat fell behind Marianne, she leaned forward to kiss Héloïse. She was surprised that she wasn’t more urgent; neither of them were. They savoured each other. Héloïse had her fingers raked through Marianne’s hair, while Marianne’s hands skimmed over Héloïse’s back. By the time they staggered over to Marianne’s bedroom, Marianne had managed to untuck Héloïse’s t-shirt, while Héloïse had unbuttoned Marianne’s jeans. They had both kicked off their socks en route. They separated briefly, so Marianne could pull the t-shirt off. Héloïse was left in her black sports bra. Marianne couldn’t help herself. She practically launched herself at Héloïse. Hungry hands explored the new spaces she uncovered: the lean muscle of Héloïse’s arms, the softness of her sides. Her lips moved from Héloïse’s mouth to her neck, eliciting a whimper from Héloïse, and then a firm hand pushed her backwards.

“What -” Marianne was about to ask, but she didn’t finish her question, as Héloïse clutched at the fabric of her sweater, gently tugging it over her head. Héloïse didn’t waste time in removing Marianne’s tank top that she wore underneath. And then, Marianne felt Héloïse’s hands on her waist, turning them around, then the next thing Marianne knew, she was on the bed. But Héloïse didn’t join her just yet. Marianne propped herself up on her elbows and watched as Héloïse took off her sports bra, and then unzipped her jeans and stepped out of them too, along with her underwear. Marianne felt her mouth go dry.

Smirking, a normally smug expression that was ridiculously more attractive now that she was _naked_ , Héloïse straddled Marianne, leaning over her and reaching around her back so that she could undo her bra. Once the garment was unceremoniously tossed on the floor, Héloïse ducked down for a wet, open-mouthed kiss. Their bare chests pressed against each other. Marianne moaned and her hips jerked upwards.

Héloïse kept kissing her, swinging her leg over so that she was kneeling beside Marianne. She broke the kiss, and shifted downwards on the bed to pull Marianne’s jeans and underwear down her legs. They landed on Marianne’s wooden floor with a soft thump. Héloïse then spread Marianne’s legs enough so that she could kneel between them.

Marianne reached towards Héloïse’s chest. She touched a nipple with her thumb and forefinger, smiling at how quickly it stiffened at her fingertips. Above her, Héloïse had her eyes closed, her neck tensed in desire. “Look at me,” Marianne whispered.

Héloïse did.

Marianne lifted her shoulders off the bed so that she could reach for Héloïse. They had gone too long without kissing. Héloïse stretched out on top of her, their hips aligned. As they kissed, Héloïse rocked her hips against Marianne’s. Marianne gasped at the sensation, of the pleasure that built up but was never satisfied. With a small grunt, Héloïse repeated the motion, then watched in awe as Marianne gasped again. They rested their foreheads together, and Marianne clutched at Héloïse’s shoulders. Héloïse used her right hand to brace herself, and ran her left hand through Marianne’s hair. Between moans and whimpers, they kissed.

“Héloïse,” Marianne gasped.

Héloïse stopped moving her hips. She raised her head so that she could look at Marianne, and nodded in wordless understanding. She kissed down the column of Marianne’s throat, then the expanse of Marianne’s chest and stomach. She got back into her kneeling position between Marianne’s legs. Marianne could only watch Héloïse’s messy blonde head working its way down her body. She could not suppress the sound that came out of her mouth when Héloïse pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the dip in her hipbone. Héloïse looked up curiously, her hand finding its way between Marianne’s legs.

Marianne said her name again.

With a frustratingly light touch, Héloïse’s finger slid upwards through Marianne’s centre. And then, instead of keeping her hand there, she rested it on Marianne’s thigh.

Marianne moved her hips upwards, on purpose this time.

Héloïse’s hands slid down from Marianne’s thighs down to her knees. She pushed them up, so they were bent, and then kissed her way down from Marianne’s right knee, down to her inner thigh. Slowly, slowly, slowly. 

Each kiss seemed exponentially longer than the last. Marianne was sure that she was about to hyperventilate. No, actually, she felt as if she was about to sob. She summoned her last dregs of patience. She willed herself not to just shift her body, to get Héloïse right where she wanted her. Needed her.

Thankfully, it seemed that Héloïse no longer wanted to waste any more time either.

Crying out at the sensation of Héloïse’s hot mouth and tongue, Marianne tangled her fingers in Héloïse’s hair.

* * *

Marianne awoke to something tickling her nose, and a warm, solid weight closing into her front. She opened her eyes to the sight of Héloïse’s hair, exceptionally unruly from last night. Lying on her side, Marianne propped herself up on one elbow and saw that Héloïse was still asleep, and was just scooting into her, perhaps because she was beginning to feel cold. She drew the duvet up to Héloïse’s uncovered shoulders, and then snaked her arm around Héloïse’s waist. She kissed Héloïse’s shoulder before surrendering back to sleep.

* * *

The next time Marianne woke up, Héloïse was already awake, lying on her back, scrolling on her phone, her naked chest exposed, her skin looking soft in the morning light. Obviously, she didn’t believe in morning-after modesty. _That_ really cleared the fog in Marianne’s head. “What time is it?” she managed to ask.

Héloïse looked at Marianne. “Just after nine o’clock,” she said.

“Oh.” Marianne rolled onto her back and stretched, not missing the way Héloïse stared as covers got displaced. “Are you getting hungry? I can make us some breakfast.”

“I’m good for now,” Héloïse said. She put her phone on the nightstand. “You have a lovely apartment.”

“I do? Thanks,” Marianne said. She realised that Héloïse would have seen her apartment as she had walked out to the living room to retrieve her phone. Marianne wondered if she did that without bothering to put clothes on, and bit her lip at the thought. She cleared her throat. “Uh, I must say, I’m not accustomed to having people over.”

Héloïse raised an eyebrow. “Really, now?”

“What makes you think otherwise?” Marianne fired back.

“I don’t know. I suppose I just assumed,” Héloïse said.

“You know me by now,” Marianne said. In her mind, she didn’t discount the significance of saying these words. “I’m too much of a workaholic to have guests. I can barely keep my houseplants alive.”

“You have houseplants?”

Marianne laughed. “I rest my case!”

“Come here,” Héloïse said softly.

Marianne scooted beside her.

“Closer.” Under the covers, Héloïse reached for Marianne’s leg and draped it across hers. She let Marianne curl into her side, Marianne’s arm thrown across her torso.

Marianne lay her head on Héloïse’s chest. She breathed in the smell of sweat, and the heady mix of the new and the familiar: Héloïse’s body and Marianne’s sheets. “This is nice,” she admitted.

“It is,” Héloïse responded, her arm comfortably wrapped around Marianne.

“What do you usually do on Saturday mornings?” Marianne asked.

“I go for a long walk. Maybe meet up with some friends for coffee, or to play tennis,” Héloïse said.

“I didn’t take you for a tennis player,” Marianne said.

“Oh, it’s a very casual, very occasional thing. I’m not any good at it.” Héloïse’s torso shook a little as she chuckled. She let out a breathy giggle, at the sensation of Marianne’s fingers dancing across her stomach.

“I didn’t take you for a ticklish person, either.”

Héloïse looked down at Marianne, a questioning smirk playing on her lips. “You keep saying that. What _did_ you take me for?”

Marianne thought back to the earliest days, in particular, the night they walked along the riverbank after the dinner with Héloïse’s parents. Back then, Marianne thought Héloïse as someone with strong will and convictions. That turned out to be true, but Marianne soon discovered Héloïse’s endless curiosity and her enjoyment for learning. They didn’t agree on everything, but it was because they pushed each other’s boundaries of understanding. Marianne found that Héloïse liked grappling with ideas and concepts like they were balls of putty, stretching and shaping them to see where and when they would start to wear out. Through listening to Héloïse, Marianne realised where she was being rigid in her own ideas. However, Marianne realised, that most of all, no matter how they disagreed, Héloïse had developed an unwavering trust in her.

“Uh…” Marianne began, not quite sure how to articulate her thoughts without sounding like she was coming on too strong.

Héloïse’s stomach grumbled. A convenient interruption.

They looked at each other and started laughing. “You said you were going to make breakfast?” Héloïse asked. They erupted into laughter again.

* * *

A few days later, Héloïse had received a call from her father, informing her that one of their relatives in Milan, a distant cousin, had in his possession, a box of what seemed to be the elder Héloïse’s belongings. The distant cousin—older than Héloïse’s father—invited them to Milan if they wanted to look at it. Héloïse had called Marianne at work to tell her that she was happy to arrange the train and the accommodation, she just needed Marianne to tell her a date that would work for her.

Marianne wanted to leave immediately. They decided to leave for Milan the day after next, on the very first train from Gare de Lyon.

It was early in the day, so they were both still bleary-eyed, but there were subtle changes in the way they acted around each other. Marianne opened a door for Héloïse that morning, and stepped aside to let Héloïse take her preferred window seat. If she remembered correctly, she even placed a hand on Héloïse’s lower back to guide her there. Héloïse, for her part, spontaneously squeezed Marianne’s hand while teasing her affectionately, and brought Marianne a cup of coffee, exactly the way she liked it, when she returned from the café-bar. Although they hadn’t had the conversation to work out _what_ they were, they both acted like they were definitely _something_.

They were to be on the train for over five hours, traversing the southeastern French railway into Italy, and then getting off at Turin to transfer onto the train that would take them into Milan.

“You know what’s nice, the further south you get?” Héloïse asked, as she looked out the window.

“What?”

“You can smell the sea,” Héloïse said. “That was one of the first things I noticed, you know, when I moved to Paris for university. Paris smelled different at first, and I couldn’t put my finger on it, and then I went back to Nice for Christmas and then I realised. All that salt in the air was missing.”

Marianne raised an eyebrow. “Really? I thought Paris just smelled bad.”

“Oh, make no mistake, it _does_ smell bad.” Héloïse chuckled. “I spent my whole life railing against my idea of home, and I moved away as soon as I could, but I never stopped missing the sea. I think I was in it before I could even walk.”

“I love swimming in the sea. When we were little, my parents used to take me and my sister on holiday to Florence, for two or three weeks during the summer,” Marianne recalled. It was a holiday for her and her sister, but she realised, as she got older, that it was a work trip for her parents. “We stayed with some of their friends from the museum world. They had kids too, and during the weekdays we’d play in the house while they worked, and on the weekends they’d take us to Viareggio.”

Héloïse picked at the cuff of her sweater. “I was thinking about Boucher, and maybe he got swept up in all of it… the coast of Bretagne, the overcast weather, the smell of salt in the air. Maybe it awakened a romantic hunger in him,” she said.

“You know I was disappointed about Boucher before, but now I want to try to understand him,” Marianne said. “I’m glad that your cousin found that box of her stuff.”

“I don’t think one can exist without the other,” Héloïse said. “Even if we only had Boucher’s parts before, the heart of this investigation is still the fact that they made something together. You even pointed it out yourself. Boucher’s paintings of Héloïse are different to anything else he’s ever made, before and after. She inspired something in him.”

Marianne couldn’t disagree with that. “This is just me still wanting the story to have been different.”

Héloïse shrugged. “Stories are more alike than different, when it all comes down to it.” 

* * *

The first thing they did when they arrived in Milan was pick up their rental car. Héloïse had picked out the smallest car available, a tiny Fiat hatchback, with the reasoning that it would be easier for them to park it places, especially in the wild Milanese streets. Marianne looked down at the car in distaste.

Amused, Héloïse wrapped an arm around Marianne’s shoulders. “Don’t worry,” she said, her voice lilting the way it did when she was about to say a joke. “I won’t take any pictures of you driving.”

Héloïse ended up driving them to the hotel. Marianne noticed she was reasonably confident with Milan’s roads, only occasionally glancing at her phone mounted on the dashboard. “We used to visit a lot when I was a teenager,” she told Marianne, by way of explanation. “My father is frustrated, he thinks he feels more Italian.”

“Does he speak Italian?” Marianne asked.

“Yes, but he never taught us,” Héloïse said. “We never spent time with our relatives here either, so I never got to pick it up from playing with cousins. Of course, he thinks it’s a shame, but that was entirely his fault. He never took the time.”

They checked into their hotel room, which only had a queen bed. This didn’t surprise Marianne, and her lack of surprise intrigued her. She and Héloïse hadn’t spent any more nights together aside from that first one in her apartment, almost a week ago, but somehow, sharing a bed in this Milanese hotel made perfect sense. Seeing that bed, with its crisp sheets and fluffy pillows, Marianne suddenly realised how much she had been wanting this. She wanted it even before she recognised the want.

Héloïse, however, stared at the bed, then looked up at Marianne. “I hope this is okay.”

Marianne placed her bag and her satchel on the floor, then walked over to Héloïse. She wrapped her arms around her in a side-hug, resting her chin on Héloïse’s shoulder. “It’s more than okay,” she said. She nuzzled into Héloïse’s hair. “I was thinking we should go out to dinner later?”

Nodding, Héloïse smiled. She placed her hand over Marianne’s forearm, and rubbed it gently with her thumb. She turned her head, so that she and Marianne were face-to-face. She kissed Marianne softly.

* * *

Héloïse’s cousin lived an hour outside Milan with his wife, in a modest and well-kept home.

They arrived there in the afternoon, and graciously accepted the couple’s offers of coffee and biscuits. They made small talk first, getting to know each other over the food and drink that were prepared. Héloïse and Marianne didn’t speak Italian, and the couple didn’t speak French, so they settled for conversing in English, which Héloïse and Marianne were reasonably fluent in, and the couple spoke passably.

The cousin, named Luca, sat on an armchair across from Marianne and Héloïse. He appeared to be in his late sixties to his early seventies, and he had pale skin and dark hair. There was no resemblance between him and Héloïse and her father. His wife took away the empty dishes before excusing herself to tend to the garden. Luca told Marianne and Héloïse about how his wife still worked as a teacher at the local primary school.

“Do you still work?” Marianne asked him.

“I’m part-time at the bank,” he replied. “Transitioning out of working, you could say. I don’t want to retire all at once. I think it may kill me.”

On Luca’s lap was an unpainted wooden chest, well-crafted but showing the wear of its existence. The varnish had worn away in most places, leaving the raw wood exposed.

“How long have you held onto that?” Héloïse asked.

“Not very long. A few months. My older sister died last year, and her children were organising her things, and they found this. They didn’t know what to do with it, so they decided to give it to me,” Luca explained. “I opened it maybe once in the time that I had it. Everything was in French, you see, and I can’t read French, so I didn’t bother looking closely.” He went on to tell them that Héloïse’s father had access to a mailing list of sorts for their extended family, scattered across southeast France and northern Italy. He finished with, “He said it would be important to you, and I really didn’t understand why. To be honest, I don’t even know I’m still holding onto it.”

Marianne stood up, reached for the box. “May I?” she asked.

Luca stood too, and handed the chest to Marianne.

The chest was not as heavy as Marianne expected it to be. She sat back down on the couch and placed the chest between her and Héloïse. They made eye contact. Marianne nodded at Héloïse, prompting her to open the chest.

Héloïse lifted the cover, which creaked on its hinges. They both peered inside. The chest wasn’t packed full, but there were several leather bound books, and a wooden panel just a little bigger than an A4 sheet of paper. A musty smell emanated from inside the chest, but Marianne’s impression was that everything was in decent condition.

Her heart began to race at the possibilities of discovery hidden inside.

Héloïse closed the chest again. She turned to her cousin. “Luca, sorry, are we able to take this with us to Paris? Marianne has equipment for these sorts of things,” she said.

Luca placed his coffee cup back on the saucer, and laid it down on the table between them. “Oh, sure,” he said. “You can keep it, actually. I have no use for it.”

Héloïse thanked him. Marianne thanked him, too, even more profusely. Soon afterwards, they said their goodbyes to Luca and his wife, and got back in their car. Marianne got behind the wheel, and Héloïse sat beside her, the chest in her lap.

Back in their hotel room, Marianne dug in her suitcase for the archival gloves that she brought. She knew it didn’t matter; plenty of hands—and a whole lot worse—would have come into contact with these items over the last two centuries, but it was good practice. Gloves on, they opened the chest again. The first thing she took out was the small wooden panel. She gasped as soon as she saw the unfinished image on it.

“Is that - ?” Héloïse started.

“I don’t know.”

On a black background were two figures, both female: the first, a stocky, grey-haired woman, possibly a matron of some sort, judging by the crisp white apron contrasting with her sober dress, and the second, a petite brunette, in an off-white chemise, laying in front of the other woman, her legs open and bent at the knee. The details of their faces were not painted, but it was clear that the brunette was much younger than the other woman, who was bent forward, her arms reaching for something unseen under the girl’s chemise.

“Childbirth,” Marianne murmured.

“Maybe one of Boucher’s daughters?” Héloïse suggested. “A little something to remember his first grandchild?”

“Why would your ancestor have it, though?” Marianne asked. “And look at it. It’s unfinished.” The shapes were there, and the image was there, but besides the lack of faces, there were also missing shadows, and furniture. The two women just appeared to be suspended in a dark void.

“Good point,” Héloïse said. She turned her attention back to the chest, and picked up one of the leatherbound books. “It’s a book of stories,” she told Marianne. “Perhaps she got them sent over from France, to remind her of home.”

Marianne put the painting down, and took out a book herself. “This one seems to be theology of some sort,” she said, her fingers tracing over the name _Thomas Aquinas_ on a random page. The next book was an edition of Descartes, and was in the worst condition, with some of its pages coming loose.

“Wait.” Héloïse was looking through another book. “This one’s a journal.” She went through the pages slowly, all filled with cursive writing, in purple-black ink that showed little signs of fading.

“That must be iron-gall ink,” Marianne said. “Dye-based inks would not have lasted this long, especially in careless conditions.”

Héloïse nodded, but she was trying to read the words on the page. “She was left-handed, like me.” She showed Marianne one page of the book. “Look at the smudging on some of this. That only happens when I write too quickly and end up smearing across what I just wrote. It happens a lot of times, see.” She flipped through to the other pages, pointing at the telltale smudge marks. “It must have been harder with those dip pens they used, but she’s neater than I think I would have been.”

There was one last book left inside the chest. Marianne was about to reach for it when Héloïse began reading out loud.

“‘I remember on our last day, I asked you if you would ask me to resist my fate, my marriage. I wanted so badly for you to say yes, but you said no. I was so angry with you at that moment. I thought you were a coward, I thought you didn’t deserve me, because I had done nothing but be brave for you. I agreed to give myself away just so you would stay on the island. I allowed you to paint me because it bought us a few more days together. I suppose I was expecting the same courage,’” Héloïse read. “‘But the more I think about it—and I think about it plenty—the more I realise that I could not fault you for cowardice, but for prudence. You brought me back to earth and perhaps it’s the best thing you could have done for me. You were right. Milan is beautiful. I get to see the orchestra, I get to buy books, I get to roam around art galleries and listen to people pretend that they know what they’re talking about. It’s a good life, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t miss you every single day. I wish I could tell you what you did for me…’” Héloïse trailed off. She swallowed as she turned the pages, skimming each one. She stopped at one that caught her eye. She cleared her throat.

“‘I went to the orchestra this evening. My husband has always been happy for me to go alone. He likes being told that he has an independent wife. I think he enjoys being thought of as subversive. He gave me money to get the best seat I could find, so I chose the one right above the stage, the closest I could get to the music without actually having to play it. According to the programme, they were playing Antonio Vivaldi’s music. So, I finally heard it tonight. The coming storm. The agitated insects. The lightning strikes. I remembered you. I remembered everything.’”

When Héloïse looked up from the page, she had tears in her eyes.

Marianne took a deep, shuddering breath. She pinched the bridge of her nose, and found that her tears had started falling, too. She could hardly believe it. The love was mutual, after all, but it ended quickly and definitely. “A fleeting love affair,” she murmured.

Héloïse heard her. “Not everything is fleeting,” she said, her voice a little shaky. “Some feelings are deep.” She tapped the page of the journal lightly, as if to emphasise her point. And then she, too, noticed the last item in the chest. “That shade of purple looks familiar.”

“Now that you’ve said it…” Marianne swallowed. “Do you think it’s…?”

“Let’s find out.”

Marianne picked it up, with the gentlest hands, as if it was the most fragile object she had ever handled. She opened the front cover. The yellowing page bore the title: _Metamorphoses_ by Ovid.

“Orpheus and Eurydice,” Héloïse breathed.

Marianne nodded. She opened roughly to where she thought the page would be, and then flipped the pages until she got on thirty. She stopped and looked up at Héloïse, who was watching her intently. Her heart was in her throat.

“Come on,” Héloïse urged, though she sounded nervous herself.

Marianne turned the page. She gasped, letting out a breath she didn’t even know she was holding. “Mon dieu.”

Occupying the white space on the page was a drawing of a woman lying on her side, her head propped up with her right elbow. She had dark brown hair, shoulder-length and dishevelled. Her gaze was wide and intense, directed straight at whoever was looking at her, and her eyebrows were quirked, almost suggestively. She was nude.

“It’s a self-portrait. This is the artist,” Marianne blurted out. She handed Héloïse the book, still opened on that page, and then she picked up the painting again. “This could be a childbirth, or an abortion, but that woman is the artist,” she said. “If the artist was a man, he wouldn’t have even thought to go into those kinds of spaces. That was the women’s domain.”

Héloïse simply stared at the woman in the book. Tears were streaming down her face, and she made no effort to wipe them. 

* * *

They had a quiet dinner in the hotel’s restaurant. As they finished up, Marianne asked Héloïse if she had any cigarettes.

“I’ve switched fully to the e-cig now. I’ve stopped buying actual ones to resist temptation,” Héloïse said.

“I’ll go buy us some, then,” Marianne said. “Wait for me outside.”

Minutes later, she returned outside the hotel, fresh carton of cigarettes in hand, to find Héloïse standing there, her hands in the pockets of her parka. Marianne opened the carton and let Héloïse take a cigarette. She waited for Héloïse to put it between her lips, and then lit it for her. She snapped the carton shut and dropped it into her coat pocket.

Héloïse took a long drag. She held the cigarette between her fingers and exhaled. “Aren’t you smoking, too?” she asked Marianne.

Marianne reached out and took the cigarette from Héloïse’s hand. She placed it in her mouth and inhaled. She smirked as Héloïse watched. “Half the tobacco,” she said as she blew out. She took another puff, before returning it to Héloïse.

“Who do you think that woman was?” Héloïse asked.

“Boucher had two daughters, remember? It must be one of them,” Marianne said. “She must have been apprenticed to her father, and she must have submitted the Orpheus painting in his name.”

“Is that common?”

“Not really, but it’s not unheard of. Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun was trained by her father. So was Angelica Kauffman,” Marianne said.

“How come we’ve heard of them but not of this artist?” Héloïse asked.

“Well, Le Brun and Kauffman were the exception, not the rule,” Marianne responded. “That’s the way it goes.”

“Yes, I guess you’re right,” Héloïse said. “For every woman we remember, there are dozens that we’ll never get to know.”

Marianne reached again for the cigarette.

* * *

The chest was packed up again and placed in a safe corner of the room.

In their sleep clothes, Marianne and Héloïse were in bed beside each other, sitting back on pillows piled high. Marianne emailed Sophie from the Museum of Fine Arts of Rennes on her tablet, while Héloïse silently watched the news channel on the TV. She was mostly reading the headlines, as the sound was turned down to a barely audible hum. After Marianne sent her email, she put her tablet on the nightstand. She turned her attention to the news as well, but found that she couldn’t concentrate. Her mind kept going back to the investigation, to the leads she followed, the clues she missed. She repressed every urge to bolt out of bed to grab _Metamorphoses_ from the wooden chest, just to open it on page twenty-eight and look again. She would _just_ look, the way she did with the other pieces back on the workbench in Paris, to see if any answers would come to her. Not that _that_ method proved particularly accurate.

She also wanted to open the woman’s journal and read it over and over again, or have Héloïse read them to her. Listening to those heart-wrenching passages about a woman torn up about losing her love, whose only power was to remember, not knowing that her lover was also doing the same… Marianne couldn’t even begin to think about it from a historian’s perspective. It was somehow the most significant discovery she had ever made, but she hated the thought of sharing it. She didn’t even know where to start.

She spotted the remote resting on top of the covers between her and Héloïse. She picked it up, and without a word, turned off the TV. Héloïse turned towards her with a curious expression, but didn’t say anything as she placed the remote on top of her tablet.

“Ça va?” Héloïse finally asked.

“Oui,” Marianne whispered. She turned on to her side and moved closer to Héloïse, leaning in to kiss her. She cupped Héloïse’s face with one hand. Encouraged by the way Héloïse immediately yielded to her, Marianne moved even closer, so that she was half on top of Héloïse. She bit Héloïse’s lower lip, causing her to gasp, and Marianne took this opportunity to slip her tongue into Héloïse’s open mouth. Her hand moved from Héloïse’s face to her chest, cupping one of her breasts through her t-shirt. Through the fabric, she could feel the nipple harden against the heel of her palm. She moved onto the other breast, intending to do the same.

Héloïse broke off the kiss. Breathing hard, she looked into Marianne’s eyes. Her left hand, which had found its way into hair on the back of Marianne’s head, gently scratched the scalp there. A questioning gesture.

Marianne nodded.

Héloïse mirrored the nod, and kissed her, slower this time.

Marianne paused the kiss and tugged at Héloïse to centre her on the bed, and then got on top of her, their legs tangling as Marianne leaned in again. Héloïse’s hands had slipped under her t-shirt, gliding freely down Marianne’s side, gripping at her hips. Marianne lifted her arms so that Héloïse could take off the shirt. She shifted so that she was straddling Héloïse, and urged her to sit up so that she could remove her shirt, too. They stayed in that position for a while, their arms wrapped around each other, Héloïse’s mouth leaving hers to kiss its way down Marianne’s collarbone, over her heart, and to her breasts. Marianne moaned, tugging on Héloïse’s hair as Héloïse took one of her nipples in her mouth, sucking at first, and then looking up at Marianne, the smirk visible in her eyes as she lightly grazed the nipple with her teeth. Marianne managed to retract her hands from Héloïse’s hair to push Héloïse back down on the mattress, an action that only made Héloïse’s smile widen. 

She wanted to tell Héloïse that she shouldn’t be so smug, but she decided to show her instead. She hooked her thumbs around the waistband of Héloïse’s sleep shorts and pulled down, shifting down Héloïse’s legs as she did so. She managed to discard the shorts onto the carpeted floor, while at the same time, using her knee to urge Héloïse to spread her legs. Marianne lay down on her side, flush against Héloïse’s naked body. Her hand traced a path from Héloïse’s chest and stomach, going lower and lower, until she stopped delaying and slipped two fingers into her.

Héloïse moaned, squeezing her eyes shut at the sensation. She opened them seconds later, her pupils blown.

Marianne heard herself moan, too, shocked at how her fingers entered with almost no resistance. She started slow, and then began to build speed, watching and listening as Héloïse reacted to her movements. She used her free hand to brush Héloïse’s hair away from her face. She gently traced Héloïse’s lips with her index finger, and Héloïse’s tongue darted out to lick it. As a response, Marianne thrusted harder, causing Héloïse to gasp out her name.

* * *

“I keep thinking about her. Héloïse.”

They were in bed, laying on their sides facing each other. They were sated, smelling like sex and sweat.

Marianne smiled. “I hope not while we were in the middle of it. Because I’m not sure if I’m into that,” she joked.

Héloïse laughed. “No, before,” she said. “Since we found out, I keep thinking about how I have her face, and I have her name, and that, you know, she also clearly liked women, or at least, definitely _a_ woman… But I get to live the life that she didn’t.”

“Yeah?” Marianne prompted.

“When I was a teenager, I used to watch my parents’ relationship. I love my parents, I think, even if I don’t like them all that much, but I can still see how much they love and respect each other,” Héloïse said. “They’re _real_ partners.”

“My parents are the same,” Marianne said. “All I want from romance is to find someone who would be my partner, my companion, the way my parents are each other’s. I thought that was a boring thing to want… But now I realise that it’s more than what _she_ got. Maybe she imagined it for herself, but that was as far as she could take it.”

“You never say her name,” Héloïse said.

“Héloïse,” Marianne tested it out, and then shook her head. In her portraits and in her own writings, the elder Héloïse had immortalised her passion, which broke free of her through her love for the artist, but ultimately suppressed. However, Héloïse, the namesake, was so alive, always keeping Marianne on her toes, always challenging her to not just adjust her view of the world, but to stick up for her own ideas, too. And so, Marianne finally said it out loud, the reason she couldn’t call the ancestor by their shared name: “When I say it, I can only think of you.”

* * *

More blanks were filled in, the more they read the journal. The elder Héloïse grew up in a convent, and as the second daughter of a minor aristocrat, was destined to be a nun. She was a nun for a while, until her sister died and her mother ordered for her to be sent back home. She was occasionally bitter about this in the journal. Her husband was not of the Milanese aristocracy, but a self-made man, a merchant who travelled frequently to the ports. He wasn’t home very often, but when he was, they seemed friendly with each other. They had one son, the only child and heir.

One entry, dated in late 1775, read: _It was the painter’s last day painting us this morning. He was easy to work with, and let me have my say on what I wanted included in the painting. He’s very proud of his work, and my husband is happy, too. We’ve all agreed for him to submit it in next year’s Salon de Paris. I hope she sees it._

It was the only reference to her lover that used a third-person pronoun.

The elder Héloïse never wrote down her name.

* * *

It felt right to go back to Bretagne, where it all began.

They started in Rennes to meet up with Sophie, to fill her in on their discovery. On the train there, Marianne and Héloïse decided that they would offer to collaborate with Sophie, to work on a pitch for a small exhibit that displayed all the work and what they knew about it. It didn’t have to be shown at the Museum of Fine Arts; they would take it to the first gallery who respected what they wanted to show. When they presented this suggestion to Sophie, after showing her all that they had found in Milan, she delightedly agreed.

Sophie expressed particular awe at the sight of the unfinished painting. She, too, didn’t know if it was a childbirth or an abortion. “This sounds a bit weird, but I’m hoping that it’s a painting of an abortion,” she told Marianne and Héloïse. “Do you realise that we’ve never seen abortion depicted in a painting before? It’s this ancient practice between women. We’ve always done it. We’ve always found ways to take whatever ownership we can of our own bodies. It’s only when men got in the way that it started becoming this heated discussion about how we’re not actually allowed to do that.”

“It fits with the painter’s style, too,” Marianne agreed. “She ignored appropriate conventions of art for her era. It makes sense that she would try to depict something that she’s never seen painted.” She looked at Héloïse as she added: “She would try to tell a story that has never been told.”

Héloïse nodded, and took Marianne’s hand in one of hers. She linked their fingers together, as if Sophie wasn’t watching, or it simply didn’t matter to her if she was.

“By the way,” Sophie said, as she opened a couple of windows on her laptop, “I looked into Boucher’s family, but people didn’t keep meticulous birth and death records at the time, and what they did keep got lost over the wars and revolutions.”

“How about the house where the artist used to live?” Héloïse asked. “In Quiberon, you said?”

“Yeah, was there anything else left there? Maybe letters?” Marianne asked.

Sophie shook her head. “That was the first place I looked into,” she said. “But I found out that the original house was torn down. The family who bought it eventually built another in its place, after World War Two. There was either nothing left there, or they had gotten rid of it without a second thought. Wait, I did find this, though.” Sophie opened a window on her laptop, a photograph of a beach. “I went to Quiberon a few weekends ago and took this.” And then she reached for one of the sketchbooks and opened to a drawing of a landscape. “Looks familiar?”

“Definitely,” Marianne said, looking at the crashing waves, the jagged coastline. She turned to Héloïse. “Did you ask your father if your ancestor was from Quiberon?”

“In her journal, she said something about an island,” Héloïse said. “Quiberon is a peninsula.”

“Island… Belle-Ile,” Sophie murmured.

“Pardon?” asked Marianne.

“Belle-Ile-en-Mer,” Sophie clarified. “It’s the island off the coast of Quiberon.”

By the end of the day, they had worked out a plan. They were going to work on the pitch. They were to begin a deep dive into the history of women’s art scene in the late eighteenth century, with the intention of piecing together the artist’s identity. The three of them went out to dinner together, and then Marianne and Héloïse drove Sophie to her apartment building, and returned to their hotel, where they got ready for bed and fell asleep almost immediately.

* * *

They drove down to Quiberon the following day, and bought tickets for the next available ferry to Le Palais, on Belle-Ile. Sailing to the island would take them just under an hour. They planned to stay there for two nights. When they arrived there in the early afternoon, they took the time to get their bearings, walking around town. Heavy grey clouds were accompanied by an ominous breeze. Every now and then, Marianne licked her lips, and all she could taste was salt. They were starting to sting. She would turn to Héloïse, who had her hood up and her scarf covering part of her mouth, but she seemed unfazed otherwise. The rain was pouring by the time they had ducked into the local library. They asked a librarian to look at some of the sketches and the paintings that Marianne had loaded onto her tablet.

The librarian stroked his beard as he examined the painting of Orpheus and Eurydice. “I mean, it’s hard to say, but I think it’s one of the beaches along the eastern coast of the island,” he said. “This grotto here, especially… You could check it out. Of course, it looks much different now, centuries later, but it’s worth a try.”

It rained hard for the rest of the day, so they took a taxi back to their hotel and spent the rest of the night there.

The following morning was better. It still rained, but not as much as before, and when they finished their breakfast, rays of sunshine began to slice through the clouds. They left the hotel and set off to follow the coastline east. With the weather looking better, they rented bicycles with electric-assisted pedals—excitedly chosen by Héloïse—for the day, stopping at every beach they could access.

A handful of beaches later, and they were both tired as they made their way down a cliffside through a well-constructed staircase, which Marianne noted were made of a sturdy, composite material made to withstand degradation brought on by the sea breeze. The stairs were a little slippery because of yesterday’s rain, so several times, Marianne and Héloïse found themselves reaching out to each other for support. They didn’t talk to each other, because the sea was too loud.

When they got down to the beach, Héloïse went ahead of Marianne, walking on sand with the balance and confidence of someone who grew up doing so. She disappeared around the corner of a craggy rock face, and from Marianne’s sight. Marianne sped up, and past the rock face, she saw Héloïse, standing under a rock archway. Marianne’s stomach dropped. She walked the rest of the way there, willing herself not to run.

Héloïse stood still, her hands clasped in front of her, her eyes flashing green against her dark clothing and the brown rock.

“This is it,” Marianne said, when she reached her.

“Yes,” Héloïse said.

Marianne found herself walking again, pacing around the grotto, looking up at the crags in the rock, at the way light bounced off them. She walked behind Héloïse, and saw, from that vantage point, the sea in the distance, melting into the sky like it did in the painting of Orpheus and Eurydice. The sun shone indirectly into the grotto, a soft glow onto Héloïse, making her hair appear lighter. Marianne felt tears prickle her eyes at the sight.

Héloïse turned around, too, as if wanting to see what Marianne was looking at.

Marianne walked back to her, and wrapped her arms around her waist from behind. She nuzzled into Héloïse’s hair, not caring if Héloïse’s scarf scratched into her chin. When Héloïse placed her arms over Marianne’s, a gesture of comfort, Marianne only tightened her grip. Her face was wet and her body shook with quiet sobs.

Héloïse turned around in Marianne’s arms. She placed her hands on either side of Marianne’s face. Without saying a word, she leaned in to kiss her, and that was when Marianne realised that she was crying, too. Their tears mixed together, and they could taste them on each other’s lips. Héloïse pulled away and rested her forehead against Marianne. She placed her left hand on Marianne’s chest, right over her heart.

They didn’t say anything, not that that they could have, anyway. It was one of those moments that transcended words.

* * *

Marianne emerged from the bathroom later that evening, drying her hair with a towel as she watched Héloïse sitting on the bed, flipping through her ancestor’s journal, without gloves. Her hair was damp from the shower. “You kept that?” Marianne asked. They had left the wooden chest at the museum in Rennes, and she assumed that all its contents would be there.

“I’ll give it to Sophie when we stop there on the way back home,” Héloïse said. “I just wanted to read it again.” She must have read it front to back at least a dozen times already. She stretched out on the bed, and patted the space beside her, while looking at Marianne.

“Wait.” Marianne hung the towel back in the bathroom and joined Héloïse. She lay diagonally across the mattress, resting her head on Héloïse’s stomach. Héloïse shifted her arms so that the journal was at her eye level, and Marianne peered up at her, her strong chin and full lips, the crease between her brows deepening as she focused on the pages in front of her.

“There’s one I keep coming back to.” Héloïse turned the pages until she had found what she was looking for. She read: “‘According to the programme, they were playing Antonio Vivaldi’s music. So, I finally heard it tonight. The coming storm. The agitated insects. The lightning strikes. I remembered you. I remembered everything.’” If Marianne remembered correctly, the page ended there, but then Héloïse continued on to the next page. Marianne knew what was coming. She had heard it before, on the train back to Paris from Milan. Héloïse had read it to her, and it knocked the wind out of both of them. In this hotel room in Belle-Ile, she read it once more:

“‘When the music finished, I looked across and saw you, over on the balcony on the other side. We were, once again, in the same place. You stood up, and I rushed to get up from my seat, and cursed myself for picking somewhere so far away that I couldn’t meet you in the middle in time. If it was really you, that is. Memory can bring up the strangest sights.’”

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, this fic is dedicated to the wonderful people on the p. 28 Discord. You guys have been an awesome part of my life for nearly two months now, and I am forever grateful for our endless, meandering conversations. I hope that you found something in this fic that spoke to you, because I really wrote it as a love letter to our community.
> 
> Some of the inspirations and influences I had on this fic were: Celine Sciamma's filmography, and her talks about the reconstitution of women and women artists throughout history, the beautiful, hostile coastlines of the Auckland west coast, Sally Rooney (of course), and strangely enough, _Die Blumen von Gestern_.
> 
> Songs I was listening to on repeat while writing this: "Shrike" by Hozier, "I Am Easy to Find" by The National, "Honey" by Robyn (which is the song that played in the club scene), "The Only Thing" by Sufjan Stevens, Max Richter's Recomposed Four Seasons, and of course, "The Louvre" by Lorde.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Leave your thoughts in the comments, I'd love to hear them!


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